Why it Feels Hard to Ask for Support I Anxiety Therapist Los Angeles, CA
When Reaching Out Feels Unsafe
There is this unexplainable ache in your chest or a furrow in your brow when you observe others engage in physical touch without second-guessing or hesitation. The same feeling shows up when you meet with a friend and they go in for a hug, but something inside you makes it feel unnatural.
Or when you are known as the listener in the friend group because it is comfortable and natural.
It’s confusing, and you don’t know why it’s easier for others to engage in physical touch than it is for you. A part of you may be craving closeness—whether physical or emotional. Another part of you, a louder one, feels anxious. So the closeness doesn’t happen.
This push-and-pull dance that happens internally comes from not knowing how to trust closeness, especially if you didn’t grow up around it being okay.
What if I told you that allowing ourselves to depend on others actually allows us to become more independent? Many of you may question if this can truly happen when you’ve lived your whole life with the belief that you can only rely on yourself for success, safety, and care. In my practice as an anxiety therapist Los Angeles, Ca, many of my clients grew up with early attachment messages from parents who held strong values of “holding it together” and “pushing through” as a means of surviving in life.
For adults who feel anxious in relationships—first-generation, BIPOC, or LGBTQ+ folks who have learned to carry everything alone—the concept of the Dependency Paradox offers a new way to understand connection and safety. We’ll tap into how our beliefs about needing and reaching for others can feel unsafe, and how healing begins with gently rewiring these early messages.
The Dependency Paradox: Why Needing Others Feels Unsafe
Many of us crave connection as an innate human need but struggle to understand why it feels harder for some than others. Attachment researchers trace this back to our upbringing—specifically, how inconsistent or unavailable our caregivers were to us as children. They coined the term Dependency Paradox to explain how having someone dependable—a secure base—allows children to grow up more independently because they internalize the message that they can rely on others no matter what.
On the opposite end, inconsistency or unavailability from a caregiver translates into messages of unreliability, leading children to develop internalized thoughts such as “I can’t rely on anyone” or “It’s safer to stay strong.” This perceived unreliability is interpreted as a caregiver who is unable to meet a child’s emotional needs for safety, security, support, and regulation. Defense mechanisms become an innate way to feel protected—whether that means keeping emotions to oneself, not expressing authentic feelings to others, being overly cautious around people, or automatically perceiving situations as unsafe.
When these early protective patterns carry into adulthood, they can make asking for help or being vulnerable feel risky. You may notice your body clenching, your chest tightening, or a subtle urge to back away from closeness—even when part of you longs for connection.
How Early Messages About Dependence Shape Anxiety
Let’s take a moment to reflect on the common messages we received as children that became internalized. This can be a good moment to pause and notice your body’s reactions to these statements. When we notice how our body reacts automatically to certain words or phrases, it can reveal how our present experiences have been shaped by past childhood experiences around vulnerability. Were you met with care, or were you met with dismissal?
“I’ll be disappointed if I need help.”
“Showing emotion makes me weak.”
“My needs are too much.”
These statements carry weight in how we understand vulnerability, how we ask for our emotional needs to be met, and what we expect will happen if we attempt closeness with others. In my therapy practice as an anxiety therapist Los Angeles, CA, I often see clients struggling to connect with others while holding discomfort around asking for help, guilt about setting boundaries, or overextending themselves to feel valued. Many come to me when their emotional threshold has been reached—when they can no longer suppress their needs or emotions and begin to feel resentment building within themselves.
Anxiety often emerges here. It can look like second-guessing yourself, emotional exhaustion, overthinking spirals, irritability, or isolating as a way to cope.
When Connection Feels Unsafe: How Anxiety Shows Up in Relationships
This anxious feeling doesn’t just impact your internal dialogue, it also extends into how you show up in relationships with others.
It can lead to finding comfort in being the listener in your group as an unknowing way to protect yourself from sharing too much.
You become the problem solver or the mediator in your family.
Maybe it’s being stuck in relationship patterns with people who take up too much space and rarely ask about your needs, wants, or concerns.
These may be all the different ways you’ve learned to stay in the background — ways that once kept you safe — but now lead to increased anxiety and emotional disconnection from yourself and those around you. Each of these patterns can create missed opportunities to see if others can truly show up for you when you allow yourself to be authentic, rather than hiding in the background.
There’s often a quiet voice that says, “I don’t want to burden anyone,” or “It’s easier to stay quiet.”
These are protective strategies your body learned to stay safe. Beneath them is often a nervous system still scanning for signs of danger, shaped by early experiences where connection felt unpredictable or unsafe.
You might notice these patterns showing up as over-functioning in relationships, taking responsibility for others’ emotions, or withdrawing when you feel misunderstood. These aren’t flaws. They’re your nervous system’s way of remembering what once felt unsafe and trying to protect you from it again.
If this feels familiar, you may also resonate with how anxiety can shape communication and connection. I explore this more in my related blog, How Anxiety Shapes Communication and Connection, where I share how these patterns often emerge for clients I see as an anxiety therapist Los Angeles CA. Therapy can feel out of reach because of wariness of talking to a stranger, struggling to trust, open up or feel safe with a therapist. Many clients begin their work with me around those same hesitations, which is why I emphasize meeting clients where they are and moving at a pace they are comfortable with. The safety that is built together in the therapy room is crucial.
Relearning Emotional Safety Through Therapy
Coming to therapy can sometimes be the first time in a long time when you can truly feel heard. But trusting that safety — that’s where the real work begins. Many clients hold the belief that therapy is a place to talk and find solutions. While that can be part of it, there’s actually deeper work happening in therapy that clients don’t always realize: the relearning and rewiring of emotional messages happening in real time with your therapist.
As a somatic attachment therapist, a big part of healing is supporting clients in tuning into themselves to discover what emotional safety means to them. For my LGBTQIA2S clients, this cultivated sense of safety offers a space to explore what it means to feel authentic, seen, and connected.
Examples of what healing can look like in sessions:
Feeling safe enough to express emotions or needs.
Practicing vulnerability in a safe, consistent relationship.
Learning to set boundaries without shame or guilt.
Therapy offers new emotional experiences that help your nervous system and body relearn what safety in connection can feel like. There’s both self-regulation and co-regulation happening, it’s not just about telling your story or recounting what happened over the weekend. It’s in the small, consistent moments — sharing what’s on your mind, noticing your body’s responses, feeling held in the presence of another — that your nervous system learns what safety in connection can feel like.
Those subtle moments, when your body begins to relax instead of tense, that healing unfolds. Clients I work with as an anxiety therapist Los Angeles, CA carry these experiences into their daily lives, they can start to notice how depending on others and being seen — is not only possible but healing.
Awareness as the First Step Toward Healing
Many of the moments that lead to getting stuck in patterns come from the struggle of not slowing down to notice the common threads that built the walls around you — walls that were created to protect you. Understanding these patterns and meeting them with compassion helps you move forward in your healing.
When we create relationships with our younger parts — the parts that needed to protect us — it allows not only greater self-understanding but also openness to new forms of connection without feeling like you are betraying those parts of yourself. Healing requires work and effort, but it does not have to be done all at once. You can slowly meet yourself, unlearn old patterns, and reconnect with your emotional needs.
Moving Toward Connection
If you’ve spent much of your life carrying everything on your own, it can feel risky to imagine leaning on someone else. But allowing yourself to depend on others, even in small ways, can be those small steps towards rewiring old messages that taught you to stay in the background or hide your needs.
Consider what “depending on others” means for you today, and how it might feel to allow yourself to ask for support without guilt or fear.
Many clients notice for the first time in therapy how protective patterns have shaped their relationships and communication. Anxiety may have led them to withdraw, over-function, or stay quiet, even when they longed for connection. By meeting the parts of yourself that once protected you with compassion, you open the door to new possibilities for connection without feeling like you’re betraying those parts of yourself.
If you’re ready to feel less alone in your relationships and explore your own relationship with anxiety, I work as an anxiety therapist Los Angeles for adults across California who want to explore these protective patterns and get into a place of self-understanding, self-trust, and confidence. They create new ways of feelng safe in closeness and connection. Together, we can help you feel more grounded, connected, and at ease with yourself and relationships. Contact me today for your free consultation at (323) 493-6644 or Book Here.
Ligia Orellana, LMFT (#122659)
I’m an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles, California, certified in LGBTQ+ Affirmative Therapy and Somatic Attachment Therapy. I help first-generation BIPOC and Queer adults who feel the pressure to hold it all together move through self-doubt, anxiety, and relationship struggles. My work creates space for deeper connection and self-trust through emotional safety and cultural understanding.
Learn more about my work with relationship stress, people-pleasing and self-doubt, and online therapy, or visit my About page to learn more.
